The expanding police state tops the annual list of stories underreported by the mainstream media

Published October 19, 2012 | By Iowadawg

Project censored

The expanding police state tops the annual list of stories underreported by the mainstream media

People who get their information exclusively from mainstream media sources may be surprised at the lack of enthusiasm on the left for President Barack Obama in this crucial election. But that’s probably because they weren’t exposed to the full online furor sparked by Obama’s continuation of his predecessor’s overreaching approach to national security, such as signing the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, which allows the indefinite detention of those accused of supporting terrorism, even U.S. citizens.

We’ll never know how this year’s election would be different if the corporate media adequately covered the NDAA’s indefinite detention clause and many other recent attacks on civil liberties. What we can do is spread the word and support independent media sources that do cover these stories. That’s where Project Censored comes in.

Project Censored has been documenting inadequate media coverage of crucial stories since it began in 1967 at Sonoma State University. Each year, the group considers hundreds of news stories submitted by readers, evaluating their merits. Students search Lexis Nexis and other databases to see if the stories were underreported, and if so, the stories are fact-checked by professors and experts in relevant fields.

A panel of academics and journalists chooses the Top 25 stories and rates their significance. The project maintains a vast online database of underreported news stories that it has “validated” and publishes them in an annual book. Censored 2013: Dispatches from the Media Revolution will be released Oct. 30.

For the second year in row, Project Censored has grouped the Top 25 list into topical “clusters.” This year, categories include “Human cost of war and violence” and “Environment and health.” Project Censored Director Mickey Huff told us the idea was to show how various undercovered stories fit together into an alternative narrative, not to say that one story was more censored than another.

In May, while Project Censored was working on the list, another 2012 list was issued: the Fortune 500 list of the biggest corporations, whose influence peppers the Project Censored list in a variety of ways.

Consider this year’s top Fortune 500 company: ExxonMobil. The oil company pollutes everywhere it goes, yet most stories about its environmental devastation go underreported. Weapons manufacturers Lockheed Martin (58 on the Fortune list), General Dynamics (92), and Raytheon (117) are tied into stories about U.S. prisoners in slavery conditions manufacturing parts for their weapons and the underreported war crimes in Afghanistan and Libya.

These powerful corporations work together more than most people think. In the chapter exploring the “global 1 percent,” writers Peter Philips and Kimberly Soeiro explain how a small number of well-connected people control the majority of the world’s wealth. In it, they use Censored story number 6, “Small network of corporations run the global economy,” to describe how a network of transnational corporations are deeply interconnected, with 147 of them controlling 40 percent of the global economy’s total wealth.

For example, Philips and Soeiro write that in one such company, BlackRock Inc., “The 18 members of the board of directors are connected to a significant part of the world’s core financial assets. Their decisions can change empires, destroy currencies and impoverish millions.”

Another cluster of stories, “Women and Gender, Race and Ethnicity,” notes a pattern of underreporting stories that affect a range of marginalized groups. This broad category includes only three articles, and none are listed in the top 10. The stories reveal mistreatment of Palestinian women in Israeli prisons, including being denied medical care and shackled during childbirth, and the rape and sexual assault of women soldiers in the U.S. military. The third story in the category concerns an Alabama anti-immigration bill, H.B. 56, that caused immigrants to flee Alabama in such numbers that farmers felt a dire need to “help farms fill the gap and find sufficient labor.” So the Alabama Department of Agriculture and Industries approached the state’s Department of Corrections about making a deal where prisoners would replace the fleeing farm workers.

But with revolutionary unrest around the world, and the rise of a mass movement that connects disparate issues together into a simple, powerful class analysis — the 99 percent versus the 1 percent paradigm popularized by Occupy Wall Street — this year’s Project Censored offers an element of hope.

It’s not easy to succeed at projects that resist corporate dominance, and when it does happen, the corporate media is sometimes reluctant to cover it. Number seven on the Top 25 list is the story of how the United Nations designated 2012 the International Year of the Cooperative, recognizing the rapid growth of co-op businesses, organizations that are part-owned by all members and whose revenue is shared equitably among members. One billion people worldwide now work in co-ops.

Continue reading it all HERE>

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From HERE.

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The Last Refuge Read this blog!

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We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day

Kaydence Hoversten, 22-month-old daughter of Gunnery Sgt. Jared Hoversten, sits in front of buses shortly before her dad and other Regimental Combat Team 7, 7th Marines leave for their deployment to Afghanistan Oct. 9 at 7th Marine Regimental Headquarters.

US Marine Corps photo by Cpl. William J. Jackson.

via.

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New “Surveillance-Proof” App To Secure Communications Has Governments Nervous

MORE.

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Russian S-400s relocated near Turkey. Hizballah shifts units, rockets into Syria

Hizballah has begun depleting line of rockets and fighting units it has facing Israel from the Litani River of South Lebanon and moving them to the Syrian front line at Homs to strengthen Assad’s forces, debkafile’s military sources reveal. Hizballah’s forward line against Israel is still in place among the southernmost Shiite villages, but a part of their artillery back-up is gone and, for the first time, Hizballah’s ground-to-ground rockets are moving in an eastward direction into Syria. This is a striking reversal of the usual direction taken by Hizballah hardware which, for years, headed from east to west to reach Lebanon from Iran and Syria.

This step attests to the scope, fury and determination of the Syrian army’s current land and air offensive against the rebels.

MORE.

…and in case you want much more war news, CLICK HERE

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German POWs being forced to watch reports of the concentration camps

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Police: Florida Couple Had Sex Atop Restaurant Table While Parents, Kids Watched

A couple who decided to have sex atop an outdoor table at a Florida restaurant–in full view of families dining nearby–avoided criminal charges

because witnesses declined Monday night to provide statements to police.

The manager of Paddy Murphy’s, an Orlando eatery, summoned cops after he “was notified by several patrons that a couple was having sex on a table in view of minor children,”according to an Orlando Police Department report.

Tom Murphy told officers that he approached the couple early Monday evening and told them to stop. But the man, identified by cops as Jeremie Calo, responded, “She can’t get up at this time.” Calo, 32, was referring to his companion Tiffani Lynn Barganier.

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Justice for Ft. Hood Heroes

Learn more at: Coalition for Ft. Hood Heroes

November 5, the day before the US Presidential elections will be the third anniversary of the massacre of 13 US soldiers at Ft. Hood by Islamic terrorist, US Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan.

The Obama administration has refused to acknowledged that the attack was a terrorist attack. The Defense Department has insisted on covering up the nature of the attack. The reports it released following the attack failed to mention Hasan’s Islamic motivations. Still today the Defense Department insists on defining the massacre as a case of “workplace violence.”

To advance this fiction, the Defense Department has refused to award Purple Hearts to the families of the soldiers murdered by Hasan, or to those who were wounded in his attack. It has refused to compensate the families of those murdered or the survivors who were incapacitated at the level the US military compensates the families of soldiers killed in the line of duty and soldiers wounded by enemy fire.

This year Congress tried to rectify this obscenity by including Purple Heart citations for Ft. Hood casualties in the Defense Appropriations Act.

Obama said he would veto the bill, (and thus deny the military funding), if they didn’t remove the clause about the medals. That is how far Obama is willing to go to keep up this fiction, cover up the existence of enemy forces within the US military, deny the threat posed to the US by radical Islam, and in the process, punish and dishonor American soldiers who were killed in the line of duty in an act of war against the US by a self-proclaimed “Soldier of Allah.”

There is no precedent in US history for this sort of behavior by an American president. None.

More here.

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Via Tammy Bruce

Excellent stuff. You could tell Obama, despite smiling and the occasional laugh, did not like being in a room that was essentially laughing at him. Ridicule is a powerful weapon, here at Tammy Blog and Radio we implement it against Obama every day. It’s about time Obama faced it personally.
Romney was funny and *biting.* His timing was excellent, he was comfortable, and enjoyed being there. Another fabulous evening for the Romneys. Here’s the whole speech, it’s about 10 minutes long.

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Obama’s back is against the wall–Mark Levin says the debates don’t matter anymore.

Mark Levin’s opening rant from Wednesday, the day after the second Presidential debate was great. Below is a partial transcription, and below that, a recording.

Obama did his very best last night and it wasn’t good enough. I’m going to tell you folks something, the debates don’t matter anymore. They do not matter anymore. There’s no way Obama can explain away his record. He’s the incumbent, these are his policies, his taxes, his regulations, his deficits, what can he say? Obama is now a known quantity. He’s cornered. Cornered with his own record, his own propaganda, his back is against the wall, so he lies. He lies about job creation, he lies about his role in oil and gas production, he lies about cutting taxes multiple times for small businesses and the middle class, he lies about cutting the debt, he lies about his concern for the middle class.

But Obama isn’t trusted anymore, see? You don’t trust him. More and more people understand that he’s lying. Because his statements don’t conform with your own reality, your own experiences now.

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